Laser printers and ink jet printers have spawned a wide variety of options for personal printing that have not existed previously. A personal computer user can now prepare text on a word processing program and print the text directly onto sheets that pass through the laser or ink jet printer. Such sheets may consist of labels applied to a backing sheet, or may be made of card stock for cutting into business cards. The sheets are typically 81/2.times.11 inches in dimension and may be fed into the laser or ink jet printer through a standard paper tray.
With experience, users have encountered difficulties with full-sized sheets of labels. The sheets typically cannot be run through a laser printer more than once because excess toner tends to build up on the blank areas of the sheet. Furthermore, the complex paper path that the sheet must follow tends to distort the desired flat surface of the sheet on subsequent passes through the printer, particularly if some labels have been removed. Consequently, if only a small number of labels are to be printed, the rest of the labels are wasted and the user ends up paying for labels that are never used.
With the introduction of adjustable manual feed guides such as those found on the Hewlett Packard LaserJet II, III and IV laser printers and other printers, users may now print on envelopes or other sheets smaller than the typical 81/2.times.11 inch full sheet size. For example, many laser printers may print sheets that are as small as 5 inches long and 3 inches wide. However, to print a smaller number of labels than those provided on a full-sized sheet, a user would have to manually cut the full-sized sheet down to size.